This Christmas, my lovely girlfriend was kind enough to get me an Arduino Duemilanove. I’ll admit that I may have been somewhat specific about what I wanted as a gift, but she managed to still surprise me by buying an Arduino starter pack and wrapping every portion of the bundle in its own little box, including a whole box for all of the bubble wrap that the thing shipped in. I have a few project ideas for this thing, but I will save those for their own posts. Keep an eye out for some new micro-controller projects here.

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I have a couple, actually. I want to make one of those alarm clocks that gradually turns on a light over a period of about half an hour. I hate having a jarring alarm clock and don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on one of those prefab ones that isn’t customizable. If I get really crazy with it, I was thinking about perhaps adding a weather widget or something like that as well, similar to your weather clock, but that is not super high on my priority list at the moment.
Another thing I want to try to do is make a laser tag system. I almost built one during high school, but I just wasn’t comfortable enough with electronics at the time plus I was going to build a system where the hardware was open, but the software was not, so looking back I am glad I did not build that system. I did, however, order most of the parts for that thing, so I have a bunch of IR LEDs and sensors ready for ‘tagging. The only issue with building laser tag sets is that you need more than one tagger for a usable system. I could probably make a very basic system based on an RBBB so that I can keep the cost down and still have enough sets for a game. I would likely just beta test on the official Arduino and borrow someone else’s as a second unit for testing (or just get a second Arduino).
Unfortunately, I don’t think I will be bringing my Arduino with me to Hungary, so odds are these things won’t happen until summer, but I will probably try and do some planning ahead of time.